I want the plugin to send me an email after a countdown has expired, but it seems this doesn’t work. What’s wrong?

Constantly checking if a countdown has expired is very resource-consuming on WordPress. So we’ve set up an hourly event that does the job. It searches for countdowns that have expired and sends an email to the email address you’ve entered on the settings metabox.

Please note the following limitation: Due to the fact that events on WordPress are not the same as Linux cronjobs it can be that an event never gets fired. WordPress always checks if there are things to do when there is a page-visit. So if no one visits your page until the Countdown has expired, your email never gets send out to you till you visit your page yourself. This is a “natural” limitation of WordPress that we cannot care about. You can read more about the limitations on the wp_schedule_event page on WordPress.

Please also note that actions will not work on variable products.

Can I also set a time not only a date?

A: Yes. This is possible in version 4.1.0 and above.

What’s the shortcode and how can I use it?

A: This is the shortcode you can use in your posts, pages or custom post types:

XHTML

1

[product_countdown]

Please note the following: You have to turn the product countdown explicitly ON in the settings-metabox on the page you want to use the countdown shortcode. Otherwise it will not be displayed.

Can I use the shortcode and the popup at the same time?

A: No.

Does it work with product variations?

Since version 3.1: Yes. But there are some limitations. This means the following:

When a product page is loaded and it contains one or more product variations it always loads the countdown for the first variation found that has a sales date. But the countdown gets updated when a variation is selected and it has a sales date.

Please note that actions will also not work for product variations.

Can I show the plugin on the homepage, front page, archive pages, search pages or anything like this?

Since version 3.3 it’s possible to show the countdown on the frontpage. For this, just go to the settings page and choose a product. Save your settings. Then edit the product and set the countdown to “ON”. It should then appear on the frontpage.

How can I add a background image to the countdown timer?

You can add your own CSS styles on every product page or you can add them globally (on the settings page). If you want to add a background image globally make sure to add the !important tag at the end to ensure that it does not get overwritten by the product page css settings. You can also set the background color back to it’s original value (clear the background color (see picture to your right).

To changes colors for both the shortcode version AND the popup version you can use this snippet. Note the !important at the end.

Can I add the countdown even when a product has no sales price / is not on sale?

No this does not work at the moment. The plugin relies on the WooCommerce functions. And WooCommerce internally checks if the product is on sale. This means that it also won’t work when sales price is the same as the normal price.

in order to activate the countdown I have to enter a sales price – is it possible to avoid this somehow?

Yes, you simply need to leave the regular price blank and set is as a sales price instead. This avoids the strikethrough and still activates the countdown.

Which filters can I use?

wpbpc_is_countdown_active_pre
You can replace the _countdown_active property by your own function before any operations (like calculation of dates and times) are done. The filter hands over two parameters: